


Beyond the Surface

by LadyOfHell



Series: Original Statements [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Attempt at horror, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Gen, Horror, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Season/Series 03, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), Swimming Pools, The Corruption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:03:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29586960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfHell/pseuds/LadyOfHell
Summary: Statement of Elizabeth Ryker, regarding an infestation in her swimming pool.
Series: Original Statements [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166756
Comments: 3
Kudos: 1





	Beyond the Surface

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Writing about the Corruption and water again? It's more likely than you think.   
> I don't like dirty swimming pools. I also don't like empty swimming pools (as in: pools without water in them), but that's stuff for another statement. this one is about typical distgusting Corruption stuff.   
> I don't think it's scary, but honestly, Corruption statements never scared me a lot. Don't get me wrong, I love them, especially "Rotten Core" or "The Sick Village", but they don't terrify me like the End or the Buried for example.   
> Enough of that, here's the statement.

"Do you have to record this?", the woman asks and points to the running tape recorder.  
"Well... that's kind of my job", the Archivist says.  
The woman shifts uncomfortably in her seat. "But this stays between us, right? You won't show this tape to anyone."  
"Did you do something illegal?"  
"No!", she replies offended. "Of course not. But I don't want the media or... my boyfriend to hear it."  
He smiles now. "No journalist will see it, Miss Ryker."  
"Thank you." She sounds impatient now, like she had waited a while for this. "I guess we can start now."  
"Alright then. Statement of Elizabeth Ryker, regarding an infestation in her swimming pool. Statement taken directly from subject on 7th August 2017. Statement begins."  
She stays silent for a moment. "Should I... start now?", she finally asks, slightly confused.  
"Yes."  
"Oh. Okay." Another moment of silence follows. "Where should I start?"  
The Archivist sighs. "When did it all begin, Miss Ryker?"  
"Oh, well, I guess it began when I met my boyfriend about three years ago. It was weird, honestly. I'm not going to tell you his name because he's quite famous. Our relationship isn't known to the public and we would both prefer if it stayed that way.   
We met at a club. Cliche, I know, but thats what happened. I was sitting at the bar, waiting for my best friend who had just wandered off with some guy, when this handsome man sat down beside me and offered to buy me a drink. I didn't recognize him, but I accepted his offer. We talked for a while and I smiled and laughed a his jokes and I found myself really liking him, so I went home with him.   
To be honest, I didn't realize who he was until the next morning. In broad daylight, without the alcohol that clouded my mind, I finally understood who I had slept with. I was sure that this had only been a one night stand, but then he smiled at me and asked if I wanted to stay for breakfast. I decided to ask him if he wanted to come over for coffee the next day. He agreed, and I guess from that day on, we were a couple.  
It wasn't true love, at least not from my part. I like him, I honestly do, but I do not love him. You may think I only stay with him for the money and if you do, you are completely right. I enjoy the mansion and the fancy cars and the pretty dresses he buys for me. I don't think it bothers him. As far as I know, he regularly has affairs on his business trips. That's okay with me though. Would be a bit hypocritical if I were mad at him, wouldn't it?  
Maybe I was just a gold digger and maybe he didn't like to be alone in his way to large house, but what did it matter? I moved in with him almost three years ago and everything was perfectly fine. It may be a weird relationship, but it worked for us.   
His house had an indoor pool, in a separate building that was connected to the main house with a hallway. It was like a dream come true because I had loved swimming ever since I had been a little girl and my whole life I had dreamed about a nice house with a swimming pool. I loved it from the moment I first saw it and I started to spend every possible minute in the water.  
It was not excessively large, but large enough to swim a few rows up and down and be exhausted after that. I did this sometimes, to stay fit, but mostly I was just chilling in the water. It was perfect. Everything about my life was absolutely perfect. I had a great boyfriend and lived in a house other people could only dream of and I didn't even have to go to work anymore. My boyfriend had enough money and so I became a housewife.   
That wasn't as boring as you might think. I slept as long as I liked to, did a bit of cleaning around the house and spent the rest of my day reading all the books I wanted to. I also picked up a few other hobbies. Knitting, for example, and painting and I started to write poetry, although I was never good at that. Like I said, life was perfect.   
My boyfriend was gone most of the time. His job involved a lot of travelling and he was gone for weeks and sometimes even months, where I wouldn't see him except for the occasional video chat. It was a little lonely in the large house without him, but I could deal with that. You can get used to anything, I guess. I spent the days with my books in my beloved swimming pool and everything was fine.  
The trouble started when we got a new pool boy. I had liked the old one a lot, but he had married his girlfriend and they had moved to Scotland together, so we needed somebody new. I had nothing to do with the job interviews, that had always been my boyfriends responsibility.   
The new guy was called Joseph Marsh. An ugly, small man with blonde hair and sunken eyes and a almost painfully thin body. I still wonder what the other applicants had looked like if this guy had been the best option. He was filthy. Not enough to get worried, but who shows up at a new job in stained cloths and with unkempt hair? But in the end, that was not my problem, as long as he did his job.   
I saw Marsh a lot, because I spent most of my time at the swimming pool. We never talked to each other, except for a polite greeting, but whenever he was around, I watched him. I didn't trust him, even though he was nothing but polite with me and never did anything you could call suspicious. Something about him seemed off.   
I tried talking to my boyfriend about it. This resulted in an ugly argument, because he thought I was missing Marsh's predecessor because I had had an affair with him. That was true, but like I said, my boyfriend also had affairs, so he had no right to get mad at me. And my suspicions about Marsh were entirely unrelated to any affairs I may or may not have had.   
I didn't know how to feel when he went on a business trip for two months. I didn't want to see him after the argument, but being around Marsh when my boyfriend was gone didn't seem very appealing to me. Of course I wasn't completely alone with him, there were also a house keeper and a gardener. But still, his presence made me anxious.   
It happened just a few days after my boyfriend's departure. It was just after noon when I went down to the swimming pool, tossed my towel on one of the chairs and jumped into the water like I always did. But the moment my feet touched the ground, I felt something other than cool tiles. Confused, I swam to the edge and put my foot up to look at what I had just stepped into.   
It was a worm. A plain, pink worm, sqirming between my toes. I screamed and without thinking, I hit the disgusting creature to get it off my foot and it fell back into the water. I hurried to get out of the pool, climbed onto my chair and wrapped the towel around myself. For a few moments I just sat there, shivering with disgust. The thought of a slimey worm on my skin just rubbed me the wrong way.   
Marsh finally appeared after a few minutes and his white shirt was dirty and stained with sweat. Oh how I hated this disgusting man. Maybe my boyfriend chose him because he wanted to make sure I didn't start another affair.   
I told Marsh, in a not very nice way, about the worm in the pool and demanded that he got rid of it immediately. Even though my voice was trembling, I screamed at him that this was not acceptable and that it was his job to make sure things like that wouldn't happen.   
He seemed entirely unfazed by this. Only said "Yes, Ma'am" and flashed a yellow-teethed smile.   
I packed my stuff and went back to the living room, mostly because I couldn't stand the sight of Marsh anymore and I was absolutely not interested in seeing that worm again.  
The following nightmare about worms didn't surprise me, to be honest. But it wasn't so bad and I forgot about the details as soon as I woke up.   
I didn't want to go to the swimming pool the following day, but I knew I had to. At least to check if Marsh had done his job and got rid of the worm. It's stupid, I know, but the incident had scared me and I felt my heart beat faster when I put my swimsuit on and went down to the pool.  
Marsh was already there and his hair was greasy and his skin was sickly pale. He greeted me like he always did and I greeted back, pulled the towel a little tighter around my body and went around the pool, checking for anything unusual under the surface.  
Nothing caught my eye and Marsh was looking at me expectantly. I didn't know if he expected me to tell him that he did good work or if he simply wanted to see me in my swimsuit, but both options repelled me, to be honest. Still, I threw my towel away and quickly jumped into the water.  
There were no worms this time, that much is true. I swam a few rows and considered to thank Marsh for doing as I had asked because I knew you should always encourage that kind of behavior from your employees. But before any word could leave my mouth, my eyes fell upon the filter of the pool.   
It was the opening that pushed the filtered water back into the pool. Black and green mould was growing all over the it, thick like a carpet. The water couldn't be clean anymore, not if it came out of that. I felt my skin crawl. As fast as I could, I swam back to the ladder and grasped to cold metal to pull myself out of the water, but when I did, my hands touched something wet and spongey. I didn't even have to look to know it were more patches of mould.   
I don't remember how I managed to get out of the pool, but a wave of nausea had hit me and seconds later I was kneeling beside the water, coughing and crying and finally throwing up. My whole body was trembling, I felt incredibly filthy and disgusting. I wanted to scream at Marsh, to demand an explaination how something like that could happen. I wanted him to tell me how that much mould could not grow overnight. But all these thoughts were silenced by the need to be clean again and so I picked myself off the floor and went to the bathroom.   
I stood in the shower for almost an hour. Maybe I burnt my skin a little with the hot water, but I wanted to burn the filth off my body.   
It took me quite a while to go back down to the pool and scream at Marsh, but when I did, the water had turned a pale green colour. It was already cloudy enough that you couldn't see the bottom and the thought that I had swam in that water merely hours ago made me nauseous again. Now I don't know anything about pool filters, but I guessed that the whole thing was either broken or infested with something. As if the situation wasn't bad enough already.  
I took my anger out on Marsh, of course. He was the cause of it. I threatened to terminate his contract, even though I had absolutely no authorization to, but I doubt that he knew that. I can't rembemer what exactly I said after that. Something about basic hygiene and how we paid him a lot of money and that he would be easy to replace if he didn't get his shit together. Maybe I even threatened to sue him if I got sick because of the mould. I was really mad and just looking at the pool made me shiver, but this disgusting man didn't even care. He simply smiled again, his sweating skin radiated a faint heat like fever and his teeth were rotting and he said "I'll take care of it, Ma'am."  
I didn't believe him.  
After that, I didn't return to the pool for over a week. I should have called my boyfriend, but I was still mad at him, so I decided to deal with this alone.   
I wore my swimsuit when I finally went back down to the pool, but I did not intend to swim. There was no way I would go into that pool as long as Marsh was still around. I was going to check the pool and if there was only a speck of mould left, I would fire him. My boyfriend would be mad at me, but I'd rather deal with that than have Marsh here any longer.   
I took my phone with me, to take some pictures as evidence. Maybe I could proof to my boyfriend that I had to throw this man out and to be honest, I don't know much about the law, so maybe we would need the evidence for court or something. Neglecting your job like that must be enough for an immediate termination of the contract.   
I was trembling when I walked down the hallway to the small building where the pool was located. The air was warm and sticky, like it always was at swimming pools, but today it seemed to get stuck in my throat. In hindsight, I remember that the smell of chlorine had been missing, but I didn't notice that at the time.   
When my hand gripped the handle of the door, I found myself more afraid than I had ever been my entire life. My heart was pounding painfully fast, but still, I pushed the door open and stepped in.  
The air was hot and humid and thick like tar, I had trouble breathing the moment I stepped over the threshold. The room was basked in a sick, greenish light, I looked at the large windows, only to find them covered in dirt and grime and mould. The little light that came through was barely enough to see.   
The door fell shut behind me and the sound of that was way too loud. I jumped and stumbled a few steps forward, the floor was wet with mud. I looked around, barely able to process what sight lay there before my eyes. The pool was only half full and its water was rotten and black and thick with algae. I stepped closer to the edge and the water shifted ever so slightly and every once in a while, worms or maggots breached through the surface, squirming and twisting and disappearing again.   
It smelled like rot and decay and death and it made me nauseous. The wet air stuck in my throat, coated my lungs and a pathetic cough escaped my lips. I couldn't believe that this was the same room I had spent so many days in, that was usually so bright and clean and perfect.   
It scared me. The room was suffering some fatal disease, fever was burning through the walls and the floor and the air. I felt the plague's frail arms reaching for me, brushing against my sweaty skin and crawling up to my head. I had to run, I knew I had to run, but the door was overgrown with thick, spongey mould that dripped with water and formed a black puddle underneath and I couldn't bring myself to touch it.   
Marsh was also there, of course, and I wasn't even surprised to see him. He was standing in the middle of the pool, his white shirt was darkened by the water. He looked like the Pestilence itself, no more than pale skin streched over bones, eyes overcast with fever and his hair was greasy and hung in his face in thick strands. Like the room he was overgrown with mold, thick and black and green and wet, and worms were craaling all over him and when he smiled at me, half of his rotten teeth were missing.  
Unable to form a coherent thought, I asked him what he had done, how the room had become like this.  
"I took care of it, Ma'am", was all that he said and he looked incredibly pleased with himself.  
I shook my head, arms wrapped around my body and fingers buried deep into my skin to stop the trembling. I felt dizzy at this point, unsure if I was going to vomit or simply collapse on the floor and I was coughing again, trying to push the decay out of my lungs.  
Then Marsh asked me to join him and his friends, as he called the maggots and the worms and whatever else was hidden beyond the pitch black surface. "Why don't you come in?", he said and his smile made his dry lips split and bleed. "You have always loved this pool so much. My friends would like you to."  
He laughed and the pests that lurked in the water began to move and a terrible slurping sound came from the pool when they started to devour the man. He laughed and laughed and didn't stop laughing until they had consumed every last bit of his disease-ridden flesh.  
That was the moment I finally managed to run. Touching that door handle was maybe the most disgusting thing I have ever done in my life, but at least I could get out of this room and breathe clean air again.  
I called pest control, paid them an insane amount of money from my boyfriend's bank account so they would come by as quick as possible and let them deal with it. To be honest, I considered dousing the whole room in gasoline and burning it to the ground, but I'm not exactly the type of person to commit arson. As long as somebody took care of it and didn't let the disease spread through the rest of the house, it was fine with me.   
I don't know what I would have done if they had found a body. Honestly, I didn't care. As it seems, the worms took care of everything, even the bones. I guess I would have simply denied knowing anything, but I can't tell you for sure.  
I was in the hospital for two weeks after the incident. I suffered a high fever and the doctors couldn't find the cause of the infection. They simply labeled it a particularly aggressive strain of influenza, gave me antibiotics and waited until I got better.  
I'm fine now, but we had to get rid of the building with the swimming pool. Pest control just couldn't manage to get it clean again. We're building a new one currently, a little bigger this time, but I don't think I'll go swimming again. At least for a while."  
She blinks a few times, almost cofused after her long monologue. "That's it, I guess."  
"Well, thank you, Miss Ryker." The Archivist nods slowly. "Just one question. You mentioned that you took your phone with you when you went down to the pool. Do you have any photos?"  
"No, sorry. I don't even have the phone anymore. Must have dropped it at some point and it got lost in the dirt."   
"Alright then."  
"You don't believe me!", she suddenly states, quite offended. "I come here, tell you about my trauma and you don't believe me and ask me for evidence."  
"I do believe you", the Archivist replies annoyed. "But physical evidence makes research usually a lot easier. Anyways, we're going to look into your case and you'll hear from us if we..."  
She huffs. "Ahm... no, I won't hear from you. You won't contact me ever. Didn't you listen to me? I said I don't want my boyfriend to know anything about this. Oh, and do all the research you want, but definitly not in my house."  
"I thought it was your boyfriend's house?"  
"Well, I live there, so it's my house too." She rises from her chair and grabs her small bag off the ground. "I will go home now. And if any of this get's to the press, I'm going to sue you."  
The Archivist sighs. "Of course, Miss Ryker."

A few days later, the recording continues. "Supplemental. Without any real evidence or names, research was rather difficult. Miss Ryker spent to weeks at the Royal London Hospital, suffering from some unknown infection that resembled the Black Plague. Apparently it manifested with a high fever, black marks on her skin as well as a nasty cough.   
I wasn't able to find out anything about Joseph Marsh. There are a few people with that name, but noone seems to match Miss Rykers description and has worked as a pool keeper. Of course it's possible that the man had used a fake name.   
All I can say for sure is that Miss Ryker had an encounter with an Avatar of the Corruption. I'm always worried about new Avatars, but as it seems, or at least if Miss Ryker's story is true, Mr. Marsh was devoured by his patron and is therefore not a threat anymore.  
End recording."

**Author's Note:**

> So, what do you guys think?  
> I don't hate it, but compared to "Wired", it feels a little... not great.  
> But to be honest, Lizzy was fun. I hate her, but she was so much fun to write :D


End file.
